Venice Film Festival: The Tempest's fantasy lost in translation

Monday 13 September 2010 10:57 BST

Breaking the gender rules: Helen Mirren as Prospera in Julie Taymor’s screen adaptation of The Tempest

Venice Film Festival: The Tempest***

The great thing about Shakespeare is that you can do almost anything with it, and it never breaks, as Helen Mirren says. She plays Prospero as Prospera in Julie Taymor’s screen adaptation of The Tempest and the translation from male to female works well, especially since Mirren speaks her lines with authority and understanding. This is a Duchess of Milan deposed by her brother and his cohorts just for being a woman in a man’s world.

But the film, despite a fine cast and a considerable number of carefully engineered special effects, lacks some of the magical qualities that lifts its story into the realms of classic fantasy. But it has two performances, apart from Mirren‘s, exempt from that criticism. Ben Whishaw brings a lightness of touch to Ariel that does not preclude a sense of unearthly danger and there’s an angry black Caliban in Djimon Hounsou who makes more sense of his role than usual.

Unfortunately there is also Russell Brand, doing his usual crazed number as Trinculo, dressed to kill by Sandy Powell and speaking his lines as if auditioning for pantomime. Chris Cooper, Tom Conti, David Strathairn and Alfred Molina are also in the cast by way of compensation.

Both the music from Elliot Goldenthal and Stuart Dryburgh’s cinematography add to the pleasures of the piece. But still there is something missing. We understand the force of the play but are rarely as emotionally involved as we surely must be.